The Strange World Of Mr. Ryan

A Deer Caught in the Headlights?

Reflections on the Veep Debate

Listening to the pre-debate chatter on CNN and MSNBC, there was much talk about whether Joe Biden would fare better against Congressman Paul Ryan, the vice-presidential candidate of the Grand Obstructionist Party, than President Obama did against their standard bearer, Mitt Romney, in their first debate. But as the other commentators fawned over Mitt Romney’s “performance,” Reverend Al Sharpton provided a reality check and pointed out the obvious: “All Mitt did was lie!”

Sharpton argued that it’s easy to win a debate if you are allowed to tailor our answers to suit your needs at the moment regardless of the facts. This is especially so if nobody calls you a liar. Hence, like this writer, Reverend Al remains unimpressed. In our eyes Mitt just looked like a lying Low-life charlatan. In a strictly monitored debate where facts mattered, Chilly B. woulda murdered da bum! .

I felt like breakdancing when honest Joe summed up Lyin Ryan’s first bogus, but well-rehearsed, spiel with the candid comment: “Malarky!” Those of us who approached this debate with the attitude of ancient Romans on their way to the Circus Maximus, where preachers of false doctrines could be devoured by lions if they make a false move, were thirsty for blood.

Most thought that a combination of Biden’s vast knowledge of domestic and foreign policy matters, coupled with his pugnacious style, would inable him to trounce the wonkish lyin Ryan. And events proved them prophetic. Totally relaxed and up on his game, Biden refused to allow Ryan to get away with lyin, and kicked a mud hole in his ass. The Veep jumped on him and beat him down with the facts. Throughout the debate Biden laughed, cajoled, wore a recurrent IDGAF smile, and treated Ryan with the amused contempt he deserves.

The Republicans are trying to save face by accusing the Obama Administration of covering up the fact that the Libyan embassy attack was carried out by organized terrorist rather than by enraged protesters as they originally reported. The Republicans argue that the attack proves the Obama Administration had been negligent about Embassy security.

It proves no such thing. In the state of widespread disorder in Libya after the fall of a forty year dictatorial regime it was impossible to know exactly what happened in the immediate aftermath of the attack on the US embassy. To insist otherwise, and to fain outrage over the supposed “inepitude” of the Obama Administration and declare the country insafe under his leadership, is patent nonsense! It is a transparent act of desperation.

And all this from a Republican? A man whose party’s last administration under George Bush ignored repeated warnings from the intelligence community that Islamic terrorist had targeted the US for a big hit before 9/11. Yet they have always insisted that the Bush administration was blameless, even as the facts demonstrate otherwise. I am not a truther however; I am accusing Bush of incompetence not complicity.

When Honest Joe confronted Ryan with the fact that he voted to cut $300 million from embassy security, Ryan came off like the kid who murders his parents then whines and seeks sympathy because he is an orphan. Alas, that was the high point for Ryan in the foreign policy debate. Ryan was mum about how a Ryan/ Romney Administration will end the war in Afghanistan, and he proved abysmally ignorant of the dynamics of mass movements comprising the “Arab Spring.”

Biden exposed Ryan as a charlatan when he directed the audience to read two letters written by the Congressman, begging for stimulus money because he believed it would create jobs in his district, at the same time that he was denouncing the stimulus program as a sham and a failure. This is the unmistakable mark of a charlatan.

Biden also exposed the fact that the numbers in the Romney/ Ryan tax plan just doesn’t add up. And he also exposed the fact that the constant attacks on the investment in green energy are based on lies and misrepresentations. The fact is that the investment in green energy projects is one of the best uses of public funds in American history, because it is laying the basis for a green economy that has the potential to wean the world off fossil fuels forever. Hence this is a technology that has the potential to save modern civilization.

As Biden adroitly pointed out, independent investigations have found the Green Energy program to be free of corruption. But this hostile attitude toward the development of alternative sources of clean energy – while they cream in their jeans at the mere thought of ripping up the countryside mining “clean coal,” drilling for oil and poisioning our aqufirs fracking for gas – exposes them as latter day neanderthals stuck in the technologies of the past, with no vision for the future.

Perhaps the most profound revelation about what Ryan really believes about individual liberty and the role of government came when Ryan was asked to state his position on abortion and he said he thought the matter should be left up to Congress to decide. It was shocking!

The guy who prattles on as if he has diarrhea of the mouth about the evils of government regulation, wants the predominately male state legislatures to decide whether a woman can have an abortion! Paul Ryan is a burlesque on a modern, enlightened statesman; a morally twisted poseur with a pathological passion for politics.

Joe Biden, who is a real man of the people in origin and philosophy, exposed him for just what he is: a sanctimonious fraud and shameless lackey for the Plutocrats. I called it for Biden by a knockout! Yet given the ignorance of the American electorate; the soulless sophistry of paid Republican flacks and right-wing radio wags weaving a web of lies 24/7; plus their innocence of knowledge about relevant facts and the rules of evidence, who knows how the untutored mob will see it.